Ascension

an absolutely gripping BBC Two Between the Covers Book Club pick

By: Oliver Harris

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Paperback | 7 April 2022 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
336 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
2.7 x 19.8 x 12.6

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Ascension: the most remote island in the world . . .

Elliot Kane, former spy, trying to leave the world of espionage behind.

Kathryn Taylor: a stalled career in MI6, running the South Atlantic desk.

Rory Bannatyne: covert technical specialist. Dead, apparently of suicide.

Three friends from a mission many years ago reconnect when one of them dies on Ascension Island. Rory Bannatyne had been tasked with tapping a new transatlantic data cable, but a day before he was due to return home he is found hanged. When Kathryn Taylor begs Kane to go over and investigate, he can't say no, but it's an uneasy reintroduction to the intelligence game.

Ascension is a curious legacy of England's imperial past. Only employees and their families are allowed to live there. It's home to several highly-classified government projects, a British and American military base, and forty dead volcanic cones. Entirely isolated from the world, the disappearance of a young girl at the same time as Rory's death means local tensions are high. Elliot needs to discover what happened to her as well as to Rory. But the island contains more secrets than even the government knows, and it's not going to give them up without a fight.

Industry Reviews

The binary simplicity of the Cold War has been replaced by a geopolitical Rubik's cube of corruption, nationalism, oil money and internet deceit. Tremendous evocation of modern Kazakhstan and the contemporary intelligence landscape. Scary if true, or even half true - Sunday Times Crime Club, star pick for A Shadow Intelligence

Elliott Kane is an unusually thoughtful spy...As much a thinker as a doer, Kane has much in common with le Carre's Jerry Westerby - Irish Times, praise for A Shadow Intelligence

Oliver Harris is always pure quality and I'm loving the hell out of his foray into the contemporary spy novel. Elegant and compulsive - Ian Rankin, praise for A Shadow Intelligence

This may be the deepest a contemporary spy novel has penetrated the cold new world of dark web intelligence and cellphone surveillance....An absorbing, superbly written novel likely to stand as one of the best spy novels of the year - Kirkus, starred review for A Shadow Intelligence

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